Estonia

"Welcoming you tourists to Estonia! I have been thinking my whole life about you. I hope to bring you many pleasure."
Estonian Junior Tourism Minister

ESTONIA

One of my favourite stories about the country is a famous football match between Scotland and Estonia. For some reason, the Estonian team refused to turn up
at last minute, and the only team on the pitch, Scotland was declared winner by default.

The hundreds of assembled Scottish fans partied all night long. In fact several dozen of them never came home, and set up residence in Estonia.


I have to say, I wasn’t overwhelmed by sources of information about the country. My lonely planet guide to Europe somehow manages to spend a chapter on Morocco – which of course isn’t even in Europe – and then forgets to mention Estonia at all. The Royal Institute’s library has only one book about Estonia. And even that book, called simply Estonia, spends as much time discussing - of all things – astronomy and water pumps (!) as it did Estonia.

Estonia is a tiny nation – a population smaller than that of Wales – indeed, more people commute to London every day than live in Estonia. I was expecting it to be a bit crap to be brutally honest, with grey concrete blocks left over from the Soviet
period. But I couldn't have been more wrong. It really is great, metropolitan, very scandinavian, not at all like any of the rough parts of East Berlin or Prague.
There are book shops everywhere, on every street corner, so perhaps its not surprising that it is the most literate nation on earth according to the UN.

It is a shame that the place is let down by the frankly shoddy tourist informations. One leaflet I was given had an introduction for some junior minister for
tourism, and I will quote part of it directly:

"Welcoming you tourists to Estonia! I have been thinking my whole life about you. I hope to bring you many pleasure."

Read through that quote again, and then try to convince yourself that the minister for tourism is not incredibly sinister.


Anyway, next stop: Russia